Responsibility must be taken for personal speech and conduct on the Internet or social media apps, as a Greater Taichung woman recently discovered after being notified that she had been indicted on slander charges.
The Greater Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office this week indicted a nurse surnamed Huang (黃) on slander charges in relation to a message she reportedly wrote on the popular mobile phone instant messaging app Line last year.
Huang works at an unnamed hospital in Wuci District (梧棲) and is said to often exchange messages with other nursing staff in a Line group called ZKH.
Huang was described as being unhappy with how another nurse had arranged her days off during last year’s end-of-the-year banquet, when it is customary for several staff members to be on duty while everyone else goes to the banquet.
Huang’s alleged message is said to have read “[Redacted]-Feng is such a bitch!”
Huang has reportedly said she wrote the post, but said that it was just a catchphrase that was often used in private.
A district prosecutor said that messages on the mobile app could be seen by everyone in the group, which constituted a public area, adding that the phrase, when written as a text, became slanderous.
The prosecutor said the office was asking for a summary judgement on the case.
A summary judgement can be applied to cases when either the defendant pleads guilty or the court feels it has enough evidence to declare the defendant guilty, but the charge is minor enough to warrant a deferral of the sentence, a prison sentence of no more than six months or a sentence that can be commuted to a fine.
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